Cold War-era Berlin airport to offer refuge amid Syrian crisis

PanARMENIAN.Net - Tempelhof Airport was, in the Cold War’s early days, a lifeline for West Berliners isolated from the world during the Berlin Blockade. Its two runways accommodated a constant stream of Western cargo planes dubbed “Raisin Bombers.”

Now the iconic former airport will reprise that role, offering refuge in a city adept at adapting to crisis, as hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers pour into Europe, a Berlin official said Friday, September 11, the New York Times reports.

Berliners’ apparent acceptance of Tempelhof’s new use as a home for some of the migrants is a reflection of a large-scale willingness across Germany to accommodate the newcomers — a message that has reached Syria and Iraq, where the war-weary view Germany as a haven and a welcoming destination.

After receiving the most asylum applications of any industrialized nation last year, Germany expects about 800,000 migrants by the end of 2015 as Europe faces perhaps its worst migration crisis since World War II.

Germans have scoured their surroundings for housing, with some residents even opening up their homes. Empty United States Army barracks that once housed thousands of soldiers at the former headquarters in Heidelberg, closed two years ago, have been reopened for migrants along with other shuttered military posts.

Faced with the prospect of 40,000 newcomers, Berlin has already added portable shipping containers, stacked apartments of corrugated metal that in some cases come complete with shared kitchens and bathrooms. By the end of last month the containers, which can be seen in southwest Berlin, already housed more than 2,000 people.